Monorail system that uses the same technology as Segways could be our nation's solution to transit.

[originalpckelly]

The gyro monorail, gyroscopic monorail, gyro-stabilized monorail, or gyrocar all denote a single track land vehicle, road or rail, which uses the gyroscopic action of a spinning wheel, which is forced to precess, to overcome the inherent inverted pendulum instability of balancing on top of a single rail.

The monorail is associated with the names Louis Brennan, August Scherl and Piotr Schilovski, who each built full scale working prototypes during the early part of the Twentieth Century. An improved version was developed by Ernest F. Swinney, Harry Ferreira and Louis E. Swinney in the USA in 1962. This system is called the Gyro-Dynamics monorail.

Although technically sound, the gyro monorail has never developed beyond the prototype stage.

Schilovski, in the introduction to his book <1>, rather scathingly attributes this failure to widespread ignorance within the engineering profession, and vested interest of the railway community. Whilst these may have been, and probably still remain, minor contributing factors, the only nations with the technology to develop the monorail at the time already had perfectly satisfactory conventional railway networks, which were not due for replacement.

However, at present, when that same legacy infrastructure imposes severe limitations on modern train performance, the case for the monorail as a means of exploiting existing routes, rather than building a complete new network, to accommodate the next generation of high speed train, does not appear quite so weak.

Unlike more obvious means of maintaining balance, such as lateral shifting of the centre of gravity, or the use of reaction wheels, the gyroscopic balancing system is statically stable, so that the control system serves only to impart dynamic stability. The active part of the balancing system is therefore more accurately described as a roll damper.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_Monorail


I've have an idea, why not take the curbs found in most modern cities and place a smaller version of the same type of gyro monorail?

Imagine how easy it would be to install this system: just jackhammer the curb, dig with an edger like tool, then insert a long and deep rail where the cement curb was.

In areas with access to light rail, you could install standard gage wheels on the thing that would be retracted during normal operation.

In many locations, the city government actually owns the curbs, so there would be no need to pay for land.

The only limit the feasibility would be street lamps and traffic light poles, as well as the workings of the right-of-way at intersections.

Now obviously, there would have to be some safety features, such as emergency tires or something if it were to tip, and the cars would have to be far narrower than the what appears in the original old photo.